Brawleys Pay Surprise Visit To Lawmaker

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Published: August 30, 1988

The tangled Tawana Brawley case took unexpected new turns yesterday with a surprise visit by the upstate New York teen-ager and her fugitive mother to a Congressman's office in Washington, and a decision by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to get involved in the case for the first time.

Miss Brawley, her mother Glenda, and the family's advisers turned up unexpectedly yesterday afternoon at the office of Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat who heads the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice. Mr. Conyers had been scheduled to meet with publishers of New York City's major black newspapers.

Neither the Brawley family nor Mr. Conyers made any statement afterward. But Ron Stroman, an assistant counsel to the subcommittee, said that Miss Brawley was not asked to talk about the claim of abduction and rape last November and remained silent during the meeting, which was devoted to discussing the Tompkins Square melee in New York City and other charges of police brutality.

After almost three hours closeted in Mr. Conyers's office, the Brawley group left moments after 7 P.M., without making any statement to clustered reporters who converged on the Capitol Hill office when word of the unusual encounter began leaking out. Miss Brawley also remained silent, as the aides hustled the family to a taxicab. Group Kept Waiting

They had arrived about 3:45 P.M. but were kept waiting about 20 minutes while the Congressman's staff tried to figure out what to do in light of Glenda Brawley's status as a fugitive, sought by New York State authorities to serve a 30-day jail sentence for contempt of court.

Earlier yesterday, after long steering clear of the clouded Brawley case, Mr. Jackson entered it for the first time, meeting before noon in Manhattan with the schoolgirl's advisers - the Rev. Al Sharpton and the lawyers C. Vernon Mason and Alton H. Maddox Jr. - and linking her ''agony and pain'' to clear acts of racial antagonism.

Mr. Jackson told a radio audience and a news conference that he would meet with Miss Brawley and her mother ''so that I might have firsthand information.'' He said: ''You cannot separate the agony and estrangement in the Brawley case from the behavior of elected officials, the Mayor here in April, or the City Council in Yonkers, the subway shooter who became a national hero or what happened in Howard Beach.'' He also called the Brawley case ''part of a larger and growing case of racial antagonisms and a loss of confidence in the judicial system.''

During his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Mr. Jackson avoided commenting on the divisive case and told Governor Cuomo he did not intend to get involved, according to Mr. Cuomo.

Asked to explain his shift yesterday, Mr. Jackson said, ''During the course of the campaign I was preoccupied with running a national campaign.'' But he said, ''The agony of the case persists. The hurt persists. It's unresolved. It's part of a bigger and growing case of racial antagonisms and a loss of confidence in the judicial system.''

At the same time, Mr. Jackson, who is in New York for a series of meetings, took pains to explain his decision to sit down tomorrow with Mayor Koch, whose attacks on Mr. Jackson during the New York primary last April was one of the antagonisms Mr. Jackson cited.

Mr. Jackson said that though the Mayor ''operated beneath the dignity of that office'' the need for Democratic unity in November overrode other considerations. Mr. Koch also made an effort to be conciliatory, at one point turning both cheeks deliberately for the television cameras. ''Nice?'' he said.

Mr. Jackson's comments on the Brawley case came as the office of the New York State Attorney General, Robert Abrams, is writing a report of its six-month grand jury investigation into the divisive case. Timothy M. Gilles, a spokesman for Mr. Abrams, said his office would have no immediate comment on yesterday's developments.

The case began last Nov. 28 in the town of Wappinger, N.Y., when Miss Brawley, then 15, was found at her family's former apartment after a four-day disappearance. She was tucked in a plastic bag, seemingly dazed. Her hair had been cut and her body covered with dog feces and scrawled racial epithets.

In disjointed notes and nods and shakes of her head to law-enforcement officials' questions, she indicated she had been abducted by two men, one with a police-type badge, who took her in a dark car to a woods where about four other men sexually attacked her.

Tests by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other authorities found no evidence of rape or other attack, exposure or injury except for a possible slight bruise. Investigators have also ruled out any involvement by three local law-enforcement officials who the Brawley family and its advisers have repeatedly implicated.

Miss Brawley, who was subpoenaed to testify for the first time by the grand jury two weeks ago, and her mother and the family advisers have long refused to aid the investigation, which they have denounced as a cover-up.

Mr. Jackson made his comments about the Brawley case and Mayor Koch on a radio program at WLIB, a station with a large number of black listeners, and at a news conference afterward at the station's studio at 801 Second Avenue, at 43d Street.

Asked how he intended to break the deadlock on the case, he said, ''I do not know. I am concerned. I do care about Tawana Brawley. I care about her mother.''

Asked whether he supported the decision of Miss Brawley's advisers to refuse to testify, he said, ''I choose not to comment on the strategy and tactics employed by her lawyers.''

Mr. Jackson was asked whether he believed Miss Brawley's story. He seemed to bridle, then replied: ''How can I answer that if I don't know what her story is? Obviously, she is in agony.''